Monday, January 5, 2015

TheWisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty(WILL), run by fellow Purple WIsconsin blogger Rick Esenberg, recently releaseda reportwhich unsurprisingly tells us that charter/voucher schools in WI have it rough and are over regulated.

In New Wisconsin, working on a Republican campaign is all of the credentials you need to be an expert on any topic. Not a single education credential went into this report, and future reports to come from WILL, on voucher/private schools.

1. State accountability laws on the school choice programs are at least as rigorous – and probably enforced more aggressively – than anything imposed on public schools. However, unlike public schools, schools in the choice programs must meet their mark or be immediately dropped from the programs, which will cause many schools to close.

After three years of not serving their kids, are being told to shape up or you might eventually get kicked off the program of taking taxpayer money(currently approx. $5 million a year!) So much for "immediately" when this school has received close to $35 million of our public education tax dollars and counting.

2. The Department of Public Instruction interprets the accountability laws in ways that deviates from the statutory language, making it more demanding than originally intended.

But new documents and former employees have raised concerns about the internal workings at Ceria M. Travis Academy, a private school that's received more than $35 million in state voucher payments through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program since 1996.

Complaints filed with the state in 2014 and obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel through an open records request allege that the school has violated state law by employing people without bachelor's degrees to teach students.

And former and current staff members say the close-knit family business has crossed a number of other lines that, while not illegal under state statutes governing private voucher schools, may be holding children back from getting the kind of education they deserve.

They say Dorothy Travis Moore, the founder and CEO of Ceria M. Travis Academy Inc., employs an unusually high number of family members and that it's hard to tell where the money for education goes, as classrooms lack adequate resources.

School officials counter that a recent review of the schools by an independent accrediting organization found the programs to be operating in accordance with state law.

That review was requested by the Department of Public Instruction as it sought to follow-up on the claims made via email about unqualified teachers at the school.

Double-checking the review's conclusion is difficult.

Travis Moore and Wilnekia Brinson, her daughter and vice president of the organization, declined to provide the Journal Sentinel with staff rosters from 2014-'15 and 2013-'14, as well as a current list of individual staff titles and salaries.

Because voucher schools are private, they do not have to make such information public.

We agree that voucher schools, taking public money should be held to the same standards as public schools. Want to know how much money your favorite public school teacher makes? They are all published in this paper.

4. New accountability measures should be tailored with an appreciation for the value of diverse approaches and parental choice. There are a number of ways to measure school performance, and different families will place different weight on these measures and the outcomes that they reflect.